Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the socialist candidate, got elected as president of Honduras in the elections held on Sunday.
She is the first woman to become president of the country. Her victory puts the Left back in power after 12 years of rightwing governments in the country. Her election assumes significance for more reasons.
It is a sweet revenge for her husband, Manuel Zelaya, who was overthrown from the presidency by a rightwing coup in 2009, with the support of US. The rightists had justified their action on the grounds that Manuel Zelaya was planning to hold a referendum asking the people whether they would approve a change in the constitution to extend the mandate of the president to two terms from the then existing single-term limit.
But the US administration and the American mainstream media accused Manuel Zelaya of trying to commit a crime of violation of the constitution by proposing to change the term limit. They called Manuel Zelaya a ‘Honduran Chavez’ with dangerous leftist tendencies. The Honduran military barged into the presidential palace, picked up Manuel Zelaya in his pyjamas, put him in a plane and dumped him in Costa Rica. This was the first-ever coup in the 21st century in Latin America, which was seeing the strengthening of democratic foundations in the first decade of the new century.
Manuel Zelaya himself could not stand for elections since the rightwing administration had banned him from public office.
President Juan Orlando Hernandez, elected in 2013 from the rightwing National Party, changed the constitution, removed the term limit and got elected for a second term in 2017. The military, supreme court, the human rights council and other organisations—that had opposed removal of the single-term limit during Manuel Zelaya’s time—had reversed their stand and endorsed the action of Hernandez. The US administration and media kept quiet and did not raise the issue of constitutional violation.
Hernandez’s victory in 2017 was controversial. There were allegations of fraud in vote counting. When Hernandez started losing, the counting was stopped. Later, the computers started showing winning numbers for Hernandez. There were protests against the rigging and over two dozen protesters were killed in the violence. But Hernandez managed to escape the fate of president Evo Morales who tried the same trick in Bolivia but was thrown out of power.
Hernandez’s government is also accused of massive corruption and links with drug trafficking. Juan Antonio, brother of the president, is already in a US jail on a life sentence after a drug trafficking conviction. The US Justice Department had accused Hernandez of links to drug trafficking. The federal prosecutors in New York had accused him of running a narco state and fuelling his own political rise with drug money. They might start prosecuting him when he leaves the presidency in January 2022.
The ruling party’s candidate, Nasry Asfura, who got the second-highest number of votes after Castro, was accused in 2020 of embezzling public money when he was mayor of the capital Tegucigalpa. The third major candidate in the presidential race, the Liberal Party's Yani Rosenthal, spent three years in a US jail for money laundering.
The victory of the Left in Honduras should give some satisfaction to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil. As president, Lula tried to help the exiled Manuel Zelaya to get back to power. The Brazilians helped Manuel Zelaya return to Honduras secretly three months after his exile and gave asylum to him in the Brazilian embassy. This was a huge embarrassment for the anti-Zelaya US administration. It was the first time that Brazil challenged the US in Central America, which is a traditional backyard of the US and playground for the CIA. The Americans wanted to cut down the overreach of Brazil and Lula and reacted ruthlessly. They put pressure on the illegitimate Honduran regime, which sent its military and police to surround the Brazilian embassy. There was a war of words exchanged between the Brazilian government and the Honduran regime. Eventually, the Honduran regime let Manuel Zelaya go into exile to Dominican Republic. This was a bitter lesson for Lula who had ambitions to check US hegemony and assert Brazilian leadership in Latin America.
The return of the Left to power is important for the Honduran masses, majority of whom are below the poverty line. It is the extreme poverty that is the main reason for thousands of Hondurans trying to emigrate to the US legally and illegally. There is desperate need for pro-poor and Inclusive-development policies and Castro is promising to give priority to these. Further, she wants to decriminalize abortion, reduce bank charges for remittances, create a UN-backed anti-corruption commission and repeal laws that feed corruption and drug trafficking.
On the external front, Castro wants to open diplomatic relations with China and close the Taiwanese embassy. Honduras is one of the remaining 15 countries in the world that recognise Taiwan. But the US administration is putting pressure on the Hondurans not to recognise China. This is one of the typical hypocritical examples of US foreign policy lectures to other countries: “Do not do what we do but do what we say”. Earlier, the US government had unsuccessfully pressurised Panama, Dominican Republic and El Salvador with similar advice.
The election of the Left to power in Honduras is a boost to the larger Latin American Left, which has returned to power in Argentina and Peru. Castro will resume relations with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, earlier shunned by the previous rightwing administration of Honduras.
Honduras is the original “banana republic” exploited by the United Fruit Company of the US in collusion with local oligarchs. The United Fruit company is no more but the local oligarchs continue their exploitation with their deep entrenchment. They will not let Xiomara Castro make any significant reform to bring about social justice.
Although Honduras is a small country of just 10 million people, India’s exports were worth $163 million last year. There is scope to increase the exports to $300 million in the next four years. It is time for India to consider opening an embassy in Honduras. The Chinese exported about $1.5 billion of goods to Honduras.
The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.